All Forum Posts by: Bob McIntosh

I have to agree that you should also start pressuring your bank to fix your rates. If you explain the situation that COULD occur if your rates go up the bank will listen, with so many places going into foreclosure and banks non-performing assets growing higher every day regulators are coming down hard on banks that don't take preventative action to minimize their non-performing assets. This is a plus for you because if you can fix your payment at a rate that you can work with you reduce the possibility of going down the foreclosure route which will keep the bank happy.

You mentioned above that you would try every couple of weeks... I would be more annoying than that. Call up the bank every day or every other day. If you have the fortitude to stick with it they will eventually cave because they are tried of getting calls from you. :) :P

Primopdf same as cutepdf... just another option :)

Adam, please do I would love to see what you have come up with after your revamp

J Scott - Thank you very much!! this will be helpful!

Would either of you mind sharing what you send to your contractors? I am just getting started into rehabs and would love to see what you guys have!

Thanks in advance!

Any of the big consulting firms will do due diligence for a real estate deal, E&Y, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte, Crowe Horwath, Grant Thorton, etc... they all have people that specialize in due diligence. There are also hundreds of regional firms that do this, and thousands of small or niche firms that do this.

The fees on a deal like that are 90% of the time hour based. You agree to pay $xxx per an hour (usually a blended rate for the staff - executives that will be working on the project) and they bill you based on how many hours it takes to complete the diligence.

One of the advantages of going with a large firm is that they will have all the additional people you will need, or have firms on standby that they can call on to do those kinds of deals.

Also just to clarify even further, the whole "why living below your means makes no financial sense..." is basically his way of saying... instead of living below your means do something that increases your means... hence you will be able to "live above" where you previously were... that's all there is to that...

I know this post is kind of old but I use:

totalchoicehosting.com

They have been very solid with lots of flexible plans for the light to the heavy user.

I would recommend a somewhat template site... There are plenty of content management system's (CMS) out there such as wordpress, drupal, typo3, Joomla (my favorite), Mambo, etc...

Many of these can be setup very easily (particularly if your web hosting company uses cPanel/Fantastico) and there are tons and tons of nice templates around that can be easily customized if wanted.

Check this option out as these CMS's will allow you to do all kinds of things and make your site nearly custom built, but still maintain user friendlyness.

There are a number of aspects you need to consider when thinking about planning a project of this magnitude.

1. You need to determine what is the competition? What off campus housing already exists, what are their rents, tenants like, etc... get to know everything about who else is renting to students.

2. You need to contact the college and find out if they would be willing to partner with you on solving the housing problem. The college I attended did a similar project and hired out the development of almost 400 units to a known and respected developer from the area (this could be a critical component... he was known and very well established). If they seem open to it that would be the best way to proceed as they can help you in all sorts of ways you never thought about.

3. You will need some serious Cash to do this and have staying power. The one down fall about student housing is that while you are booming and raking in cash during School what happens when Summer comes and the majority goes home? You suddenly have a severe shortage in prospective tenants. (keep in mind that many students will not want to rent yearly because they are home for 2-3 months every summer, and in some cases a month or more during christmas/new years).

Those are just some quick things that I can think of off the top of my head... There is however some amazing potential in the student housing market.... I know you are in the NY area as am I, I would interested to know where your prospective area would be and possibly help you out :) Feel free to message me...

I seem to be doing this a lot lately... but alas it is the best answer i can think of....

http://www.amazon.com/Trump-Strategies-Real-Estate-Billionaire/dp/0471718351

While I would claim that most of this book is junk in the fact that he talks up a lot of trump properties, it does offer a few chapters worth of information that are worth the read. Particularly on financing (chapter 6 I believe), deals like these bigger ones require some creative thinking on how to structure them and this book offers a good base line to get your brain thinking creatively about financing.